Sorry my anti-procrast was on so I couldn't reply sooner! > say someone is Chinese and wants to post on HN and has a pro-government view of his own country, wh

Sorry my anti-procrast was on so I couldn't reply sooner! > say someone is Chinese and wants to post on HN and has a pro-government view of his own country, which is quite common, you're saying they don't even need to bother posting? I don't think I am saying that and I don't think that what I described implies that. If pro CCP comments are flagged, downvoted and responded to, that doesn't mean pro CCP commenters don't have the ability to or _shouldn't_ post a defence of their own country. In fact for people to downvote, flag or respond to pro CCP comments requires that they bother posting a defence of the CCP harvesting organs [1], beating up HK protestors [2][3][4][5], ethnically cleansing the Uyghur [6], or implementing a social credit system [7] - in the first place. I suppose this comes down to how we define tolerance and disagreement. I think that downvotes, flags and responses are signs of disagreement rather than intolerance. While upvotes are signs of agreement. Should a pro CCP commenter feel bothered to post a defence of their own country? If what makes them feel bothered to post is when people are likely to agree with their defence, then no. However, if what makes them feel bothered is just their belief that anti CCP comments are wrong about something, then of course they should still feel bothered to post their defence because nothing about flags, responses or downvotes stops one from holding a belief. But their posting of that belief doesn't mean we have to agree with it [8]. Though, maybe in this case the mass downvoting of a single opinion is a genuine intolerance of opinion. If so, then where the tolerance of opinion ends is far too late. - [1] https://chinatribunal.com - [2] https://gfycat.com/slimymetallicblackfootedferret - [3] https://i.redd.it/rrnd6wxb9li31.gif - [4] https://v.redd.it/vlvuyx4n1wk31/DASH_360?source=fallback - [5] https://v.redd.it/xs79vkkzojh31/DASH_360?source=fallback - [6] https://boingboing.net/2019/09/22/sundials-are-everywhere.html - [7] https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/1/18246297/china-transportation-people-banned-poor-social-credit-planes-trains-2018 - [8] https://xkcd.com/1357/